Monroe ballot battle rages

Saturday

Nov 9, 2013 at 2:00 AM

MONROE — The outcome of Tuesday's tumultuous Monroe elections remained uncertain on Friday, with hundreds of emergency ballots still uncounted and no indication if enough were cast to erase the leads supervisor candidate Harley Doles and his Democratic running mates held over United Monroe's candidates.

BY CHRIS MCKENNA

MONROE — The outcome of Tuesday's tumultuous Monroe elections remained uncertain on Friday, with hundreds of emergency ballots still uncounted and no indication if enough were cast to erase the leads supervisor candidate Harley Doles and his Democratic running mates held over United Monroe's candidates.

As of Friday, a court order issued in Westchester County and affecting all counties in the state's 9th Judicial District was preventing the Orange County Board of Elections from examining any ballots until Nov. 18.

That order — which is also stopping the county from counting paper ballots to decide other local and county elections — stems from a petition brought as a precaution by a Supreme Court justice who easily won re-election and may have no need to continue the case. If it's withdrawn, the Monroe ballots could be opened next week.

Sue Bahren, Orange County's Democratic elections commissioner, said Friday that 2,950 emergency ballots were sent to Monroe in the midst of an unprecedented voter crush on Tuesday, although the number cast is unknown.

United Monroe expects the amount is far lower, based on reports from its poll watchers — perhaps too low to close the Democrats' 1,700-vote lead.

The citizens group has focused its attention on a batch of Kiryas Joel votes added to the Election Day totals on Wednesday that raised the tallies for Doles and his running mates by about 545.

Those votes were cast at Aishes Chayil, a postpartum rest center that served as one of two Kiryas Joel polling stations on Tuesday.

Bahren said the additional votes were taken Wednesday from a ballot scanner that was assigned to Kiryas Joel after the county's computers had been programmed and couldn't be read on election night.

Emily Convers, United Monroe's supervisor candidate, said Friday her group is scrutinizing the gap between the 6,378 votes Doles reportedly received — including the additional Aishes Chayil votes — and the 5,341 total votes its poll watchers counted on Kiryas Joel's voting machines after the polls closed. The difference is more than 1,000 votes.

The contest for supervisor and two other Town Board seats on Tuesday amounted to a voting duel between two halves on Monroe, separated by Route 17: those in Kiryas Joel, and those in the rest of the town. Kiryas Joel's bloc-voting residents turned out in droves for Doles and the other Democrats, while voters everywhere else jammed the polls to elect the United Monroe slate.

United Monroe has complained about a litany of Election Day problems that occurred at polling stations their supporters used but not in Kiryas Joel: huge ballot shortages; emergency ballots with print too small to read; and a two-hour wait in one packed station that drove voters away.